Sunday, May 11, 2008

Iron Man

Toys for the boys movie, yes. But the only interest for non-boys is its take on the US military. Stark is of course the most government-friendly Marvel hero (next to Nick Fury), and the film does credit the army for assistance. After going to Afghanistan and seeing his weapons being used against American soldiers (and civilians) he comes home and says he's getting out of the weapons business. At the end we know that the Afghan baddies had Stark Inc weaponry because they'd been given it by bigbad Stane - presumably, though this was left a little hazy, as a bribe for killing Tony Stark, since the actual income capacity of Taliban types is presumably rather limited. Anyway, the point is that he's not shocked by the use of US weapons by the US army, which is the actually frightening thing about US weapons tech.

Anne said "Militarism posing as pacifism" and gave it a 4 out of 10 (but she's not a boy).